1. I’ve got kind of into horoscopes. I used to read them religiously when I bought women’s magazines back in 2004ish, when I was 14ish. Then I stopped. Then a few months ago I read some and I was like, you know what, this is getting me pumped. Nothing gets me pumped anymore! I gotta make a note of this. So I followed a couple websites on my Feedly, and recently talked about it on twitter, and someone gave me a bit more info, and basically I’m totally into it. I still can’t read most of anything, I’m not sure I believe much, I’m not sure I put much weight on it— but what I get out of it is immeasurable and I just don’t get it out of anywhere else. I feel silly even saying it. But when someone says just what you need to hear— even if it’s bad!— and you don’t have a “legitimate” source (yet— shocking news, I have a psych appt on August 8 for the first time in years) telling you these things? It can easily be what gets you from A to B. And so far it’s not led me astray once.

Here’s what I’m reading on a weekly basis: The Numinous, and Chani Nicholas. Usually Chani I find incredibly opaque and Numinous is to the point; this week it was the opposite. And I was just introduced to Amelia Quint, who gave me a little bit of info on my chart and I look forward to reading going forward.

3. The dress and the photos in this Mode and the City post are fighting for my attention. There’s something so wonderfully calm about it all, and her look is, as always, perfect.

4. Media consumption is a part of my life again, with ups and downs. I watched all of Santa Clarita Diet, which was entertaining, if not something I’ll remember much of in five days (or now). Then I started Grace & Frankie even though, not unlike zombies, it is not my thing, and watched a season before I decided I was both feeling it too much and not feeling it enough, and wanted the daughters to feature more heavily.

After that, I got sucked in by iZombie. That is probably the first TV show I’ve watched in many, many years — since I stopped writing fanfic, in fact — that I’ve felt fannish about, that I’ve wanted to expand on, that I’ve felt invested in in a good way and wanted to go on. Like I said above, zombies are not usually my thing, but the mythology here is quite all right, and I love that the plot expands while keeping a tight focus on the main cast, and that the secrets do keep getting out in a timely manner. I ship basically everyone with everyone, and I wish it had a bigger fandom, but at least the show itself is doing well, doing so, so well, and so far doesn’t seem like one I’ll be bitter about for years to come (sup, Vampire Diaries).

I’m looking for something new now and I started Lovesick, but as much as I like Antonia Thomas I just don’t know that I’m feeling it too much. So I may switch to something else. I still got Brooklyn Nine-Nine to catch up on.

4. I read The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli and it was amazing. Just. Goddamn. Books are the best, giddy happy amazing. Loved it to bits. Happy I can now read Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda and there’s even a connection!

Earlier this year — finishing it just as I got to Munich; I’ll expand on my travels at some point, promise! — I also read Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown, and I could not recommend it more, either. I’ve had very good luck with my picks so far this year. They’re both organically diverse, beautiful coming-of-age stories, with fleshed-out sibling and family relationships and oh my god, Mary Carlson. Oh my god. And the way I related to Unrequited’s Molly in regards to Reid? A HUG.

5. Summer is way underway, too underway, please-get-it-away-from-me underway, and it’s getting me all confused about laundry because there’s so little to wash that I feel I should toss in more… but it’s just less fabric, isn’t it, and also: there are only so many summer clothes I can actually wear when the temp is in the high 90sF/30sC, and all I have is a fan that keeps warming up when it’s on too long.

I’m bringing good stories to you again. I’ve wanted to get back into the habit for a long time, but now I actively save links and write blurbs. I hope you find these interesting! Scroll to the end if you’d like to go straight to the visual recs.

First up: The Financial Diet put up an interview with Mallory Ortberg of The Toast that I found incredibly refreshing honest on both a personal and an industry level. Mallory talks about salaries, her short stint as a freelance writer, her Toast partner’s financial contributions/essential backing of the website, having multiple streams of income, making money from advertising and paying writers from the beginning. She’s smart and open and it’s just a great read and something I want to see more of. The creative field has gargantuan issues with fair compensation and disclosure; the more we talk about it, the more normal it will be.

Related: Mia has been sharing blog income and traffic reports since October of this year on XO Mia, and I love it because you get to see someone who’s just starting out and isn’t making five figures a month navigate monetization and blog growth. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate income reports from people who are established and making big money, but one of the reasons I’ve always been hesitant to share my own information is that I was — well, embarrassed. I talk a lot about living below the poverty line, and finances being a big factor in my anxiety, and I’ve taken big steps in overcoming the shame that often comes with it, but I still find it hard to admit, for instance, that a sale was a flop, or that nobody’s hired me in two months (someone broke the streak last week), or that I barely managed to do one sponsored post — whether due to not having the time/energy, putting it off, not doing the work of contacting people, or turning down opportunities that didn’t meet my standards. I always have an excuse on the tip of my tongue; call it promising child syndrome, “if I don’t study until the last minute I have an excuse if I do badly on the exam.”

Also related: Gaby Dunn wrote an article for Fusion about being too famous to work a normal job but too broke not to, mainly about youtube stars and how that doesn’t always translate into a steady income, and what a double-edged sword fame can be. I could write an entire post — and very likely will when I get my podcast going — about the myth of selling out and this hush-hush culture so many bloggers participate in that only serves to help people devalue and take advantage of us. Gaby’s article talks about the range of figures in brand deals because there’s no standard or communication; it tackles transparency and fan backlash, and it mentions the very fear of losing money you need if you bring up the issues in public.

And there’s this line that really hit me, “I’ve walked a red carpet with $80 in my bank account. Popular YouTube musician Meghan Tonjes said she performed on Vidcon’s MainStage this year to screaming, crying fans without knowing whether she’d be able to afford groceries.” I can’t fathom that kind of fame; I’m a small blogger and I’m lucky in that I find it easy to turn down non-paying “opportunities” because frankly, I don’t see the point in them. But I found it funny-sad to read, because when I lived in London, I was often invited to events that would have made me feel on top of the world — if I’d been able to afford the tube to take me to them.

this NY Mag story about Tracey Norman, a black transgender model who became quite successful as a female model in the 70s until rumors spread that she wasn’t cis. It really serves to underline the progress that has happened over the past three decades in terms of acknowledging trans people and fighting against the stigma and the need to pass as cis and the deceit stereotype. I find it overly optimistic considering the violence and danger trans women, especially trans women of color, still face, and the endless ignorance around transgender issues — right there in the article in the way some of the models they spoke to talk about how they didn’t know Tracey “was a boy” — but I appreciate the positive outlook and the fact that it’s a supportive article on a big publication.

Kristy Tillman started a newsletter a little while back celebrating creativity from black women. It’s called Tomorrow Looks Bright, it hits your inbox on Sundays and I really recommend it! Their latest newsletter may be my favorite; that School of Thought collection is utterly gorgeous, and the photography is to die for. The feminist authors design includes Lucille Clifton, too, so naturally I’m obsessed.

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From Men Explain Lolita to Me: “It is a fact universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of an opinion must be in want of a correction. Well, actually, no it isn’t, but who doesn’t love riffing on Jane Austen? The answer is: lots of people, because we’re all different and some of us haven’t even read Pride and Prejudice dozens of times, but the main point is that I’ve been performing interesting experiments in proffering my opinions and finding that some of the men out there respond on the grounds that my opinion is wrong, while theirs is right because they are convinced that their opinion is a fact, while mine is a delusion. Sometimes they also seem to think that they are in charge, of me as well of facts.” Also: “censorship is when the authorities repress a work of art, not when someone dislikes it.” Well worth a read.

At the end of last month, I’d come up with a relatively straightforward plan to launch three things in November, as well as do a significantly better job of keeping up with another two areas of my business. I’m happy to tell you my blogging and client work have gone unusually smoothly, but the projects… not so much.

Everyone always shares what they did to make things work, sometimes what didn’t work during those launches, and how much work happened behind the scenes that you may have assumed did not. They usually talk about things that happened, after they happened. The fact that they got pushed back or weren’t ready when they were supposed to is a line in the larger scheme of things — just like I’m hoping this post will be a small note once I get my projects going.

Through all of my school years — elementary and high — I never had any doubt that I’d go to university. I performed well academically; I was a bookworm and all about learning and I saw no better future for myself than learning more for as long as I possibly could. My career goals changed and faded, with being a writer always staying put as the foundation, but my academic goals only did in terms of what I would study at university.

(Creative Writing either isn’t or wasn’t a college degree in Spain, and I was never that drawn to studying creative subjects, anyway. It seemed far too subjective a field to be graded on.)

Growing up, my family were a bit more financially stable than we are now; my father usually had a job and we had my grandfather living with us, helping out and funding the whims of his grandbaby, aka me. Even when times were tight, college was still in the horizon for a simple reason: scholarships.

In Spain, scholarships are given based on your level of income, and most non-medicine-related degrees have a passing grade fence, so you don’t have to try very hard to get in. Even after my mental health issues extended to physical symptoms and my average went from A to B, I wasn’t worried about getting into college. I didn’t have to write essays or pay to apply.

I like this system. I support this system. Everyone should have access to education, and scholarships are much better than loans, in my opinion. It’s great not owing tens of thousands of insert-currency-here to the government. You just had to meet certain criteria to get the money, and achieve certain low-pressure goals to keep it.

I dropped out of college three months in, bought a MacBook and a Canon camera, went back to sit two exams in September and didn’t have to give any money back. I couldn’t get another scholarship for my first year doing English in my hometown the year after that and my parents couldn’t afford one, so it’s one chance and you blow it, but that’s much better than many, many people get, and my laptop lasted me quite long and my camera — I still use it on the regular. I’m building a blog and a business with that camera.

Time management is a super popular topic in freelance and business blogs, presumably because nearly everyone struggles with it. There’s a lot to do, and it’s hard to snap out of the society-backed idea that we are what we accomplish, and that success doesn’t have to involve being busy all the time.

This is something I’ve thought about a lot with my business, particularly since I was able to catch my breath financially speaking by moving back in with my parents. I spent a year where I was perpetually behind, and my mental health was suffering, really suffering for it.

I wrote a post on how to relieve anxiety with various methods and how to get started with each of them. One of my recommendations was simply to quit. Quit what was giving you more grief than joy. Delegate it, automate it, or simply cut it out of your life or process. It sounds drastic, and it can be; I arrived at it through burnout, after all.

Now, however, I’m practicing ‘quitting’ in much lower-key, consistent, sustainable ways. There are many ways to save time when you’re a blogger or small business owner, and you don’t have to wait until you’ve been crushed by stress to implement them.

In becoming more intentional about my blogging and business and acknowledging the certain aspects of being a professional creative at which I particularly suck, I’ve been revising my habits and plans to be tailored to me — me and all the weaknesses it’s more effective to work with than against. And I wanted to share some of the ideas that work for me with you.

Disclosure: This post was written in collaboration with Avirtual.co.uk.

Went a little grunge for the announcement there, but that’s the beauty of classics: they go with everything, effortlessly.

I’ve been meaning to redesign the site, restructure the content and essentially rebrand, short of changing my name or business interests, for over a year now. At one point last fall I even went as far as designing a mockup for a new blog design and having it developed in nearly its entirety by a friend, but she got busy, and I was stressed, and then I decided I hated my branding anyway. I wasn’t sold on the typography and I was bored to tears by my color palette.

For a year I waffled over what style I wanted, as there isn’t just one that appeals to me, and what went with whatever I wanted my blog to be. I narrowed down the topics I blogged about and I started to think about new categories that encompassed some of what I was doing but made it more intuitive to find and write about cohesively.

And then I moved back in with my parents, spent three months on the verge of a nervous breakdown, got my room back, and took September off. I was going to dedicate the last two weeks of September to the redesign, giving myself some time to rest after I got home from Barcelona.

A couple of weekends back, a shady, shady link indeed showed up in my WordPress stats: a whole thread — all for me — had been started on a hate forum, and people were clicking over to my blog from it. Being the curious person I am, I clicked. Everything was the usual: either bullshit, accusations of incompetence that made little sense, or remnants of annoyance over the things I do that clash with the most people, especially asking for help.

All in all, I could have shaken it, but the truth is those things stick to me, and that’s why my policy is to block early, block often.

I closed the tab and kept away, but a few days later, when I’d stopped dwelling on it, the link showed up again in my referrals panel.

Google comes up with all sorts of results for hiding referrals in your Google Analytics, but the panel I check the most often — idly, casually — is my Jetpack WordPress stats, and I wasn’t going to stop just in case I was tempted to go feel bad about myself. I’ve been tracking my progress lately, especially my Pinterest hits, and it’s just second nature to look at them.

But seeing a link like that in your stats can be tempting. And seeing a spam link in your stats can mess them up, too. So I went out of my way to figure out a way to hide it. I even directly asked Support. And they gave me a solution, which I am now sharing with you because you know, I stayed strong those five hours, but I could have clicked in the time it took to find a way to hide the link, and seeing the thread on Sunday made me unreasonably sad for four days. I don’t want anyone else to go through that.

Right, so. Pinterest. Y’all know I like it a lot. My about page, which is in dire need of updating, literally mentions “wistfully sighing at interiors” as a hobby of mine. Pinterest is also great for gathering inspiration for design and photography, and I regularly use it to save gorgeous photos off blogs I read and particularly stunning portfolio pieces when I peruse designer portfolios.

The social media platform aspect… that’s one thing I’ve, thus far, failed at. I wasn’t sure how to get going, or if I could be bothered. I thought I may have to restructure my content (which, coincidentally, I have done for my rebrand, but I’m not hitting the new sections hard yet) and that it was just sheer luck.

Turns out — maybe it isn’t?

This summer was a fantastic time for me to randomly decide to work hard on my Pinterest game, because it works perfectly with all my hindrances — i.e. my sister’s presence/lack of alone time and the heat. It’s largely a click click click game, with very little wording necessary, so I’m happy to do it on my phone. And I don’t need to think about it beyond making an effort to remember if I’ve repinned a certain office space before.

In this post, I’m going to share my half-assed strategy, make it into a full-assed one, and share a worksheet so you can join me in making August the Great Pinterest Renaissance on this here blog.

The first thing I did was sign up for Caitlin Bacher’s Little Farm Media newsletter. She’s got a free ebook when you sign up that tells you how she gained 1,000 Pinterest followers in a month. You can get it here!

Thanks to that ebook, I took the plunge and turned my account into a business account and verified my website. For the longest time I had no idea what the point was, but it turns out you get access to stats. Now, I don’t know how to use those stats, but that’s not the point, because you need a verified website to set up rich pins.

How do you set up rich pins? Fran from Free Borboleta tells you how right here.

Those are some cool optimization tools for my website, more than for Pinterest itself. The other thing I came away with from reading Caitlin’s book was this:

Pin like you’re on FIRE. She suggests 50 pins a day, and 10 from your own site. I’ve not reached that number once, but I’ve been pinning two or three dozen a day, and some old posts, and I’m shocked and amazed at the fact that I’m actually getting two-digit figures of hits from Pinterest every day. This is a big big change for me.

The final part of my so-called strategy is not as simple, but simple enough: group boards. Group boards are amazing if you find the right ones. How do you know if a group board is good, and right for you? Two checks:

Is the topic a fit for your blog/business? If you’re an infopreneur, a recipe board isn’t going to do much for you.

Do the pins often get repinned and liked? A board where everyone’s pinning but no one is repinning isn’t going to do you any good.

To find group boards, I recommend going to your favorite pinners’ profiles and checking which groups they belong to. You’ll find boards you want to join much faster this way than by running general searches, in my experience!

To join a group board, check the group description. It will let you know if it’s adding pinners at the moment and how you need to reach out to the owner. There’s usually an email, or it may tell you to follow the board (you have to do this to be added at all) and leave a comment on a pin with your email address. Presumably the owner has a system, so don’t mess with it.

Once you join, heed the above again: only pin things to the board that are on topic for it, and remember to repin the articles you like on it! Like all other social media, it doesn’t work if you get on a soapbox and refuse to come down from there.

So that’s what I’m doing, on top of adding vertical images to my posts — you kind of get used to them after a while, but if you don’t like them, hide them! — and keeping my pin it button.

And now for the

FREE WORKSHEETS

Come play with me! Leave your Pinterest account in the comments (follow mine!) and I’ll make sure to check out what you’re pinning and help you in your Pinterest Renaissance! (Naissance? I’m definitely in the naissant stage. Man, I should really practice my French if I’m going to move to Paris next year. I had to check to be sure the infinitive form of naiss-whatever was naître.)

I’m not bothering keeping freebies behind the curtain until I rebrand, but you should totally sign up to my mailing list anyway. You won’t regret it.

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PS: Following me isn’t a requirement! It is just, er, strongly encouraged. ;)
PPS: Tell your friends! This took a million years. Well, no, but it felt like it. People make worksheets look so easy!

If you’ve been around for any of my moves on Twitter, you’ll know every time I complained about packing up until the fifth or last pack, at which point I finally thought to lay everything out on a bed and go SCIENCE.

I mean, it’s not science. Probably. But by the time you’re thinking about weight distribution, standing over your laid-out clothes and saying, loudly, “Step back! I’m going to try SCIENCE!” feels like the only way to hold on to your sanity for long enough to get you on your way.

Today, I’m sharing some tips on packing light for your summer holidays, and a few of my travel essentials! Just a heads up that by summer holidays I mean “holidaying somewhere it’s summer, and relatively warm,” so if you’re heading to Antarctica, even if it’s July, this may not help as much.

Anxiety has been a companion of mine for a good long, long decade. It’s hard to think of a time when it wasn’t pushing its way through the crevices of my brain and knocking on my temples like a five-year-old child going, “Pay attention to me. Pay attention to me. Oi! Pay attention to me.”

In that time, I’ve tried a sizable amount of techniques and attempted to build habits; I’ve been hesitant to use medication and refused completely and gone back around to ‘yes, let’s’; I’ve accumulated a long list of shit that doesn’t work — much of which makes me angry, too — and a much shorter list of shit that works — well, sometimes.

Sometimes still beats never, so I’m going to share those things that make living with anxiety a little easier on me.